The design of the Roku Ultra hasn’t changed much in recent years, and the Ultra LT is no exception. It’s still a small, rounded, square enclosure that measures 4.9 inches in diameter. There’s a Roku logo on the top, and a microSD slot, HDMI port, power connector, and Ethernet port on the back. That’s about it. You plug the HDMI port into your TV, the power port into a power outlet, and you’re good to go. The remarkable thing about the Ultra LT isn’t so much what it has, but what it doesn’t. The regular Roku Ultra also has a USB port on the side of the box and a remote find button on the top. The find remote feature is of questionable value, but the loss of the USB port definitely hurts a bit. You can still watch your own content on the Ultra LT with a microSD card or media server, but it’s not nearly as convenient. The Roku Ultra LT runs the tried and true Roku OS. Unlike many other streaming OSes, Roku doesn’t flood you with content from first-party providers as soon as you turn on the device. Instead, you can organize your home screen as you see fit. By default, the Ultra LT home screen has a variety of options, the Fandango movie and TV stores, an app store to find new streaming channels, and so on. However, you can disable many of these options in the settings menu so that the home screen only shows the features you actually use. The Ultra LT comes with the second best Roku remote you can get. This isn’t a puff piece, but the remote on the new Ultra has two additional programmable buttons. The Ultra LT remote, however, has everything else: Media control buttons, directional buttons, a voice search button, and power and volume buttons that work on newer TVs after an effortless pairing process. There are also four dedicated buttons for Netflix, Hulu, Vudu, and Sling. This is good if you use these apps, and useless if you don’t.
